Birkenhead is essentially a 19th-century `new town', its planned grid of streets still stretching westwards from the Georgian elegance of Hamilton Square. Two hundred years ago it did not exist. The settlement, such as it was, consisted of a mere scatter of farmhouses and cottages which supported a population in 1801 of just 110: 17 families living in 16 houses.
The catalyst for change was the introduction of a steam ferry service, and by the end of Victoria's reign the town numbered over 110,000 inhabitants. It gained its first MP in 1861 and became a borough in its own right in 1877. The docks first opened in 1847 and the great ship-building firm of Cammell Laird provided a backdrop to the town's spectacular growth. Today, although shipbuilding has ceased and activity in the docks has declined, much of the legacy of this magnificent past has survived.